Book Review – Curious Critters: Marine

If there is one type of book my son loves, it’s books with a lot of pictures. When I was given the chance to review a new picture heavy book by David FitzSimmons called Curious Critters: Marine, I couldn’t resist. I received the book a few weeks ago, and while it has taken me a while to finally post about it, it’s not because me or my son didn’t like it. Quite the contrary – it’s an awesome book with a ton of high quality pictures of marine life. My son may not be able to read, with high quality pictures and some text on the page, this book proved to be a nice read to an inquisitive mind.

The best way I can describe the book is that if you remember back to the days when you were in Elementary School or went to the library when you were young – these were the types of books you salivated over. We didn’t like reading novels without pictures, we wanted informative books, not too long, with lots of pictures and neat information. Curious Critters:Marine meets that demand head on with amazing pictures and little tidbits of information about the critters being described. For instance, did you know that the Atlantic Horseshoe Crab has 9 eyes and can see with it’s tail? Or did you know that the Loggerhead Sea Turtle is the largest hard shell turtle in the world? FitzSimmons also puts some truly funny poems in his book spoken from the point of view of the critter which was really refreshing vs. reading descriptive text like other books.
If you have a toddler who likes to be read to or if you have an older kid who has shown an interest in marine biology, Curious Critters: Marine is a great addition to any library. The high quality pictures, hardback cover, and concise yet entertaining information on each page of the book will definitely be a crowd-pleaser. If I had to say anything negative about the book, it’s that it’s a little short and I wish there was more to experience. But, for around $14 on Amazon you can pick up a nice little book that will look great on your kid’s library shelf. I’m glad we’ll have this book on hand as Jack learns to read and hope it continues to spark his imagination like I’m sure the pictures have done so far.